By James Hall
MBABANE, Swaziland, Apr 4 2002 (IPS)

Typifying the lifestyle of multinational criminals in Southern Africa, Swaziland’s most wanted man, Billy Shaw, skipped over the border this week, and is now in South Africa, absorbed, police say, into the crime network of the populous neighbouring state.

“He crossed the border as if it weren’t there,” says Vusie Masuku, public relations officer for the Royal Swaziland Police Force.

Help from South African police to bring him back to stand trial for his role in running a nationwide burglary syndicate will only come when Shaw’s location is confirmed.

A law enforcement official in Maputo, Mozambique, who is familiar with the cross border operations of Southern Africa’s crime syndicates says, “The escaped Swazi criminal is now a citizen of a vast criminal underworld that spreads from the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) to the Serengeti (Tanzania).”

“He (Shaw) is not just South Africa’s problem now that he has escaped Swaziland. He is a regional problem for what he represents, African ‘mafias’ that have better connections, better communications and in some cases better resources than national police forces who oppose them,” he says.

Law enforcement experts say the crime syndicates of Southern Africa, who trade in narcotics, counterfeit money, stolen cars and hijacked factory goods, are so successful because they are multinational. In contrast, police forces are national in scope, with limited jurisdiction and budgetary restraints endemic to poor countries.

“The criminal mafias are like big corporations. They know no borders,” says Pat Mkhaliphi, a Nelspruit, South Africa police detective who was involved in the arrest of a Swazi narcotics kingpin whose assets in both Swaziland and South Africa were seized after a plea bargain with prosecutors.

Mkhaliphi says a well-organised crime syndicate, specialising in highjacked vehicles, will maintain a string of safe houses and garages throughout the region. Criminals, many recruited from poor urban townships where jobs are scarce, are indoctrinated into an underworld that thrives through organisation, and whose communications system – much work is done using mobile telephones – is financed through lucrative illegal activities.

Most criminal syndicate activity in the region is centred on stolen vehicles, their resale or cannibalisation for spare parts. Of the 115,000 motor vehicles stolen in South Africa in 2000, 15,000 by hijacking (the violent removal of the owner while he or she is operating the vehicle on the road), 50 percent were taken for resale in African nations to the north, according to the South African police.

Illegal poaching of wild game remains big criminal business. Law enforcement officials say the region’s crime syndicates originated in the large-scale poaching of the 1980s.

At the time, nations engulfed in civil war like Mozambique and Angola were unable to protect their game animals. Poachers were either former soldiers or criminals who could easily purchase arms of war from the regions’ combatants, who received their guns and ammunition free of charge from Western or communist governments then fighting the Cold War by proxy on the African continent.

The region’s rhino population was nearly exterminated as poachers gunned down the animals for their valuable horns. Elephant populations were also decimated.

“Africa’s mafias began with the poaching syndicates,” says nature conservationist Ted Reilly. “This was the first time indigenous criminal syndicates set up outposts in several countries, developed lines of communication and overseas customers.”

A surfeit of illegal guns continues to be a problem in the region. South African and Swazi police routinely mount roadblocks to confiscate unregistered firearms. The cessation of civil war hostilities has halted the importation of war weapons in Mozambique, but a new source is to be had further north and east, at the strife-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, and Angola.

The poaching syndicates also developed transportation networks for their illicit goods, which were later copied by stolen car and drug syndicates.

Law enforcers say the area’s drug lords come from Nigeria, who import cocaine and manufactured narcotics through porous borders and past police officers who have been bribed. Southern Africa produces copious amounts of marijuana. The region’s indigenous drug syndicates distribute marijuana to local customers, and connect with international cartels to ship the drug to Europe.

One way to combat the menace is for the region to become as organised as the crime syndicates. Safety and security protocols of the Southern African Development Community, comprised of 14 regional states, call for integrated law enforcement efforts.

The sharing of intelligence and forensic facilities is key. Relatively wealthy South Africa has the latter, and poorer neighbouring countries are using South African crime labs to identify evidence used in court proceedings.

National armies have undertaken joint training exercises, and in some instances multi-national police forces have carried out interdiction and destruction operations against marijuana growers.

A region that has largely secured peace in the past decade and is bound by increasing economic ties is in a better position to mount multilateral policing operations, and to share intelligence.

A regional drivers license to be used by all vehicle operators may lead to a regional identity card, while presently an identification system for cars is being tested that forbids autos from travelling across borders unless each is cleared by a computerised data base.

Law enforcement officials are hoping such cooperation and communication will no longer belong solely to criminal syndicates.

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